by Alissa York
The light there is poor, and Dorrie resists the urge to join him, lamp in hand. She could say so much about the diamondback—how her heart skipped a beat when Hammer dragged it from his kill bag, how its lank weight thrilled in her palms. It’s no mean trick getting a snake to come smooth. The detail she’s most proud of—the one everybody seems to overlook—lies in the rattlesnake’s open mouth. It required such patience, such delicacy of touch, to slip her finest brush between its fangs and bring the bright palate to life.
All this and more she keeps to herself, waiting for him to speak. When he does, it has nothing to do with the snake.
“You always work at night?”
“Mostly.”
He nods. “I don’t sleep so good myself.” He turns his attention to the next bale, where a pair of yellow-bellied marmots sit up tall. “Hello, boys.”
“Boy and girl,” she corrects him, and he shoots her an over-the-shoulder glance. “Brother Hammer prefers mated pairs. Families.”
“That so.” He watches her a moment longer before letting his neck uncoil. Tilting his gaze, he points to where the mountain lion claims three bales of the highest tier. “What about him? He’s all on his own.”
“It takes longer with some. You can’t always bag a full set.”
“Huh.”
He stands still for a time, staring up. Then movement, the nature of which Dorrie can’t begin to comprehend. It’s as though he’s melting, dropping to the ground in a boneless, unknowable mass. In the time it takes her to inhale sharply, the mass reconstitutes itself in the shape of a second lion—rump settled between haunches, belly long, chin resting on paws. Dorrie feels her own jaw drop, the purest of compliments returned.
“Bendy,” she whispers.
“Yep.”
For a moment they grin stupidly together—until an idea disturbs her delight.
The child went first. She had lived two years, learning early, laughing and grasping hold. Girl or no, she looked out through Younger Brother’s eyes. This pained the Tracker—most of all when he caught a flash of recognition in the woman’s gaze—but in the end the resemblance only added gravity to his love.
Just as the girl had taken shape at her mother’s breast, so she dwindled in her mother’s lap. She vomited while there was still anything inside her to bring up. The Tracker brought water, basket after pitchy basket, as fast as his legs would carry him, but her bowels ran faster, discharging a flecked and constant stream that reeked of fish. Little did he know he was hauling the source of her sickness, a river-borne gift from the Mormonee settlement upstream.
Crouching over mother and child, he reached out to feel the small heart racing, the delicate skin giving way. The eyes sank until they were no longer Younger Brother’s. Until they were scarcely even eyes.
By the time the Puagant came swinging his crooked cane through the deepest pre-dawn dark, the child was already gone. His trip was not wasted, however, for by then the woman had begun to sweat. Symptom by symptom, she re-enacted the dying of her child. The Tracker sat twisting his hands while the Puagant did everything in his power to suck the disease away.
Again, death came with the sinking of the eyes. In the following breath, the Tracker felt his own soul tear free and leave him. He could have asked the Puagant to dispatch his spirit and retrieve it, but the old man was so wrung out from his ministrations he could barely stand, and the breaking dawn would drain what little power he had left. In any case, the Tracker was loath to have his suffering core brought home.
The sun hung directly overhead. After sitting for so long, he rose like a man still dreaming and set to work amassing her things. Burden basket, water jug, bowls. The woven cradle, outgrown but not discarded. Her hat, worked so neatly into the shape of a beautiful breast. Every object was a testament to her industry, her skill. Winnowing trays, parching trays, treasure basket. This last he didn’t dare explore for fear he would come upon some love gift from Younger Brother. It completed the pile, at the heart of which lay his shrunken, beloved dead.
He brought a flaming pine limb, dropped it and backed away. When the brush hut caught, the blaze was great. All who stood witness backed away—all save the Tracker, who chose the most direct and dangerous way to mark himself a mourner with the traditional singeing of hair. At length he turned to find the camp—those who had not also fallen to the sickness—gathered behind him. He met no eye as he passed among them, left their company without a word.
Draped crossways over his bunk, his boot heels and the back of his skull resting on the floor, Bendy feels this mildest of stretches bring some relief to his weary back.
It’s hard to say where he went wrong. True, he was overstepping the mark by just being there—dropping in on the boss’s young wife while she worked alone through the night—but he took pains not to spook her, keeping a fair distance between them and, for the most part, keeping his eyes to himself. It was far from difficult, there being plenty besides her strange little face to stare at in that barn.
For a long moment after he stepped inside, he could scarcely make sense of what he was seeing. He’d seen mounted antlers before—deer, antelope, moose. A bear claw necklace, countless lucky rabbit feet and tails. Even a grizzly head hanging high over a bar, so crudely stuffed its face had warped into a grimace more frightening than any it could’ve managed in life. Nothing, though, that had prepared him for that dark menagerie, the work of those bright red hands.
The air was heavy, hung not with the smell of animals so much as with that of their homes—nests and dens abandoned. Acrid, unnameable strains drifted above the musk. The base odour, a brackish undertow, seemed to emanate from beneath her workbench.
She was nervous of him at first, but her demeanour eased as she took in his awed response. “Did you—?” he stammered. “Are these yours?”
Pride brought her forward out of her collapsed posture—chin first, then chest. He thought he caught the edge of a smile.
We were fine, he thinks, stretching his arms out to lay the backs of his hands on the floor behind his head. We were getting along fine.
It had been her idea in the first place, him doing a wolf. He played the first scene that came to mind, evoking the rangy male he’d watched emerge from a river running wide and slow. Climbing inside memory, he assumed the dripping animal’s form, planting his four paws, pausing for a moment before shaking himself shoulders to tail. She rewarded him with the briefest of smiles.
The back of his head and the rounds of both heels have grown warm—a shallow bone saucer and two matching cups collecting blood. Flexing up out of his flaccid arc, he rolls over onto his right side. The spaces between his left ribs expand as one ear and the outer rim of the corresponding boot meet plank.
“That’s no use to me,” she said coolly, as though the smile had never been. “I can hardly make one that’s moving, let alone wet.”
“Oh.” He sat back in a human squat. “Right.”
A second memory surfaced then, a dark balance to the clean renewal of the first. “Well, they’re something to see when they’re feeding.” He was already looking inward by then, drawing the image down through trunk and limb. He dropped forward again onto his hands. “One time I rode through a valley the day after the sharpshooters had been through.” He rounded his shoulders, getting the feel of a menacing hunch. “Buffalo carcasses as far as the eye could see. They’d taken the hides and left everything else to rot. Every one of those red mounds had a wolf on it, some of them had three or four.” He lowered his head. “You wouldn’t believe how loud they get, all of them tearing and snapping and growling at the same time. Sounds like a brush fire.” He curled his lips back to bare his teeth, and, with a loud click, unhinged his lower jaw. Only then did he think to flick his eyes her way.
He wouldn’t have thought she could get any paler than she already was. Wouldn’t have dreamt a warm-blooded creature could turn the colour of midnight snow.
“Stop it.” She was trembling.
By
the time he’d resumed the shape of a man, she had the shaking under control.
“I’ve got work to do.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll be going, then.”
“Yes.”
Making for the door, he felt the glare of every false eye in the place.
— 25 —
ON OPENING NIGHT a late summer storm blew hard. The tent wept rain, roaring with every gust, while lanterns smoked and swung, wafting the fishy stink of whale oil. Camden got things started, running a frenetic course with his monkeys to whip up the crowd. When the moment was right, Pitch strode onto the scene and ushered the hairy fools on their way. Taking sole possession of the ring, he launched into his opening harangue. He had to bellow to be heard above the weather, but it was clear from the beginning that he had a way with words. That is, until the words began to have their way with him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there are those who would brand this night’s entertainment sinful.” Pitch opened his eyes wide. “But I ask you, is a man’s only respite from the hardscrabble, workaday world to be found in church?”
The crowd obliged him with a spray of laughter.
“God gave man dominion over the animals—witness the menagerie.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the straw blind, the pathetic assembly of creatures that lay beyond the tent’s back wall. The sight of Philomena’s shrouded cage spurred him on. “Witness Mena, the amazing dog girl!”
Men whistled and bayed.
“Was not man made in God’s image? How better, then, to glorify God than to bask in the splendour of the human corpus? See here.” He stretched out an empty palm as though it held proof of the strike of a lifetime, a nugget the size of a cat’s skull. He worked the fingers—crooking them one by one, wiggling the lot—then drew a loose question mark through the air with the thumb. “Miraculous!”
He was losing them. Bendy watched it happen from behind the blind—bottoms shifting on bales, hands floating up to fiddle with earlobes, collars, beards. It was a pattern he would come to know. Somewhere around the one-minute mark, an idea would sprout wings, lifting Pitch and his patter beyond the crowd’s caring.
“Witness this very night,” Pitch cried, “the heights this God-given body can reach. Feats of strength, of daring, of skill—performed by your humble ringmaster on the back of another of the Lord’s creatures, the mighty horse!”
He paused, silence flowering. He’d forgotten himself entirely, lost his place not only in the monologue but in the sightlines of all those eyes. He stood rigid, blinking, as though shaken by the shoulder while out on a ramble in his sleep. Hecklers opened their mouths. Bendy counted them, seven sudden rents in the fabric of the crowd.
And then Camden ran in juggling, wearing a coat covered in birds. On his hat a brazen parrot parted its beak. “Shut up, blowhard!” it screeched, and the audience went wild.
Bendy came on after the clown had bled off some of the crowd’s steam. Under Pitch’s orders, Stanley had rigged him up a miniature stage—six tea crates lashed together and mounted on a spread of wheels, still sticky with a hasty coat of yellow paint. Hiss and spit of lamps above him, wooden echo below. He might as well have been naked in the hose and open vest Pitch had given him to wear. Scarlet. A colour he’d never laid hands on, let alone worn. He felt rare in it, raw.
He began with something simple, arching backwards to write with his body, a back-slanting capital P. Next he reached for his ankles and formed a narrow O. The audience was cool to him at first, unsure in the face of his wordless, shifting shape. He won them over by degrees. His human tree drew forth the gasps he’d hoped for. His waddling gull made the children squeal. By the time he became a cat—one foot stretched to the heavens while he licked his red tights clean—they adored him. In the glow of their regard, he became sensible of a spreading, penetrating warmth.
The true animals followed. The undersized bear let Pitch lead it about, placid as a moron child. The mountain lion fought the cageboy’s chain, lunged and spat, but refused to chill the congregation with a scream. Saved for last, the dog girl put both beasts to shame.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Pitch bellowed, “I give you—Man’s! Best! Friend!” Swinging the cage door open with a flourish, he greeted Philomena with a hearty, “Hello, girl!” Her cue to surge out of the shadows and begin joyfully licking his face.
Pitch lifted her down to heel at his side. He fixed a red leash to her glinting collar and paraded her before them, somehow stepping proud on her hands and knees. She rose up onto the balls of her feet when he loosed her and let her run, but kept like a good dog to all fours. Bounding to the verge of the ring, she sent the crowd recoiling with a snarl.
She fetched beautifully, driving her nose into the dirt, grasping Pitch’s riding crop in her teeth, pausing to wag her hind end furiously to a chorus of whistles and hoots before wheeling and returning the prize. He made her sit. Lie down. Yip a mournful tune. Roll over and play dead, her dark, shapely limbs in the air. The closing trick was simple, brilliant. Pitch reached into his pocket for a biscuit. Philomena sat back on her heels and begged.
The audience ate up the dog-and-master act, but it was nothing to what would come next. Pitch was an unusual man on his own two feet. On horseback he became remarkable.
He entered at a trot. Without benefit of the yellow top hat, his head seemed unnaturally small, his hair greased to a shoe-black sheen. Knowing the worth of the mare’s beauty, he made several plain circuits, letting the crowd fill their eyes with her before kicking into a canter and springing to a stand on her back. A cheer broke the crowd open wide. It wasn’t the feat itself so much as the ease with which he managed it—as though a great transparent hand had descended to pluck him up by the scruff and set him squarely on his long bare feet.
The unseen hand held the ringmaster steady on one leg while supporting the other behind him like a rigid tail. From there it helped him safely to the ground, scooping him up the moment his toes met dirt to vault time and again over the pretty grey. Bendy marvelled at the man, but kept a portion of his admiration for the mount. Through everything, Belle held her canter, reliable as the sun.
Pitch dropped back into the saddle and, as though the great hand were twisting him like a cork stopper, began turning circles on his seat, his heels just clearing the tips of Belle’s ears. He rode facing her tail for a time, then slipped down her inward flank and hung there Comanche-style, hidden from view. When next he stood on the grey mare’s back, the hand flung him heels over head in a series of backward somersaults. Women screamed. For a finale, the invisible fingers guided him headfirst through a maze of hoops held aloft by his brother the clown—the last of them dancing with flames.
Pitch knew enough to end the show on a high note, standing firm on Belle’s rosin-coated back with his arms open wide and his big mouth shut. The audience roared for him as he rode his final circuit, forgetting for the moment the lack of tumblers and scantily clad girls, the sad menagerie. They were still applauding full bore as he rode behind the straw blind and out the tent’s back flap.
Bendy slipped out in time to watch him pull up short before the mountain lion’s cage. The storm had scudded on, leaving the world sodden, the firmament clear. Belle stood steady, blowing hard. Pitch slid to terra firma, becoming a trembling, sweat-drenched thing. His bare soles sank in the mud. He’d removed his tailcoat before the ride, performing in waistcoat and trousers—the golden plush gone dark in cat-whisker patterns about his crotch, sagging half moons beneath his arms.
The cageboy approached and caught hold of Belle’s reins, handing over the ugly top hat as though in trade. Pitch returned it to his head without a word. Belle knew the drill. She followed Stanley along the train of cages to its end, disappearing after him into the stable he’d knocked together out of clapboard and sailcloth the night before.
Pitch flipped a tin feed pail and lowered himself to sit. “Fetch me my coat.” He pointed to where the garment hung from the latch of the lioness’s cage. A
deeper, dirtier shade than the animal on the far side of the bars, the coat was damp with rain, ripe with Pitch’s stink. Bendy held his breath and plucked it down, delivered it to the ringmaster’s lap.
Pitch cradled the tailcoat loosely, one hand rifling its folds. Retrieving pipe and pouch, he stuffed the bowl, struck a match and sucked up a mouthful of fruity smoke. He didn’t offer Bendy a pull—nor did he offer comment on the boy’s debut. Hunched on his pail, he sucked and sighed as though he was alone.
“Mind if I get a little practice in later?” Bendy said finally. “Riding, I mean.”
Pitch glanced up, smoke driven from his lips in a grey rush. “Thought you said you could ride.”
“I can.” Bendy toed a shallow puddle. “I want to get the feel of the ring.”
Pitch let his gaze slip, the strain of keeping it tilted too great. “Not on Belle.”
“No, sir. I thought I’d try the gelding.”
The ringmaster eased himself up from the pail. “Come back when the crowd’s cleared,” he said around the pipe’s stem. Turning side-on to the space between two cages, he sidled through the gap and was gone.
Bendy had intended only a short stroll—just long enough to let the last of the gawkers vacate the tent and its charred surrounds—but he found his limbs craved the plain swing of the human gait. He followed Second to where Montgomery angled off, and turned right on California, headed for the docks. Every dull heave of dune, every scrubby front garden, every salt-rotten whiff soothed his senses. At the foot of Central Wharf he found himself reluctant to turn back.
The grounds were lifeless by the time he returned. A lantern had been left hissing at the mouth of the corridor that ran between the tent’s back wall and the train of cages—a beacon to those who belonged, a deterrent to those who would do mischief under cover of dark. Realizing he was one of the former, Bendy felt himself smile. He lifted down the lantern and entered the makeshift arcade. Above him, a strip of night. To his right, a pale expanse of canvas, to his left, the hunkering train. The cages were blind and silent now, their bars fitted over with panels of painted wood. Each bore an illustration, an ill-conceived rendering of whatever lay breathing within. Bendy paused before each crude portrait, holding the lantern close.